


Soft Animals

by cloudsofsmoke



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, F/M, Kinda, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-30 21:39:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19411930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudsofsmoke/pseuds/cloudsofsmoke
Summary: If God decided that she wasn't going to let our favourite troublesome duo wriggle out of the consequences of their actions, maybe She would take their appropriate punishment into Her own hands.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Updated daily! I'm trying to break the cycle of updating once a year.

Ezra stood in the biscuit aisle, looking at the palm of his hand under the fluorescent Sainsbury’s lighting, and thought _this is the human body, made in the image of God Almighty_.

This was not the first time that exact thought had arrived in his head.

He watched as that hand turned palm side down, and slowly moved on the horizontal axis until it was closing around a packet of milk chocolate covered digestive biscuits. 

He was having one of those nameless feelings again. He was rife with them, hundreds of feelings which possessed him in turn, constantly shifting and changing like a kaleidoscope. Sometimes feelings arrived upon him in pairs, sometimes in even more configurations than that. Most of those configurations had no specific name in any language. They might arrive at any time. There was no end to it. 

As he placed the biscuits in his basket, alongside a single carrot, a single tomato, and a pint of milk, he catalogued himself. 

There was a tingling in his extremities. His throat felt tight, there was a definite weight in his stomach. He was aware of his joints. His breathing seemed to be...shallower? And his eyes had a soreness to them - oh. They were leaking again. So was his nose, actually. He put his basket on the floor and smacked his pockets, looking for a tissue. 

His breath was starting to hitch. And his voice was making those little gasping noises again, and - there. There was the pricking along his arms and legs. The back of his neck. The redness in his face, a heat spreading down and across his chest. Embarrassment. One of the worst out of all the feelings. 

Ezra Raphael was a human, and every single thing, every single day, was hard. Everything was so, so fucking hard.


	2. Chapter 2

The first problem he had ever truly had to solve had been his bed. The second, third, fourth, and fifth obstacles had all been the same thing, of course: money. 

He had been wrung out, both trembling and numb. Sitting at his desk for some reason. Another human would have recognised it for the muscle memory it was. 

He had both hands flat on the cool surface of his worktable, both feet flat on the floor, and Crowley had come back in, and gingerly placed a cup of tea on the coaster by his right hand. 

“I’ve put four sugars in it. They say that’s what you do, for shock.”

He’d looked up at that familiar voice, and stared again at that bizarrely familiar and unfamiliar face, the soft dark hair, and the eyes! 

He turned back quickly, and his gaze fell on the tea again, and he wordlessly watched the steam rising in translucent curls from his favourite mug. 

Crowley- no. Anthony. Anthony cleared his throat and said “Maybe you should just get to bed, angel. Come on, I’ll...I’ll help you get your shoes off. You never know! Maybe everything will seem better in the morning. That‘s what the humans say.”

Without taking his eyes off his tea, he said “Get me to what.” As toneless and steady as a metronome.

He could hear Anthony Crowley shift as he looked around, as if doing so would produce a bed from nowhere. 

The artist formerly known as Aziraphale laughed to himself, a huff off air from the nose, because that’s exactly what he would have done if he had ever needed a bed. 

He would have miracled one from thin air, made a large and comfortable bed appear in the right place in his home as if it had always been there, and all the details would have obligingly arranged themselves to make that possible. 

But that wasn’t possible. And since he was stripped of his Heavenly Grace, it would never be possible again.


	3. Chapter 3

He had woken up, that first warm day, and looked around at his shop. From this angle, he could see something like scratch marks underneath his display table. The bookshelves towered over him like trees in a dark forest. There were cobwebs in all four corners in his eyeline. He couldn’t recall a time he had ever laid down on his own floor. Or on any floor. 

He sighed deeply, and then sneezed from nowhere. His eyes were stinging from the dust, which had been very useful when warding off persistent human customers, and now. Well. 

He sat up, and realised that his arms and torso were covered in a dark shape - it was his friend’s jacket. He ran a hand over the stylishly cut black leather. 

It warm from his own skin, and from the friction of his blood moving around in his veins. It was warm from his own body. 

His heartbeat picked up speed for some reason, and he cast the jacket across the floor.

And he turned to look where his head had been - yes, that was his own beige woolly jumper, folded into an approximate pillow, and he remembered none of it. 

He had definitely been sitting on the floor at some point, head in hands, elbows on knees. He had definitely pressed his palms against his eyes for a long time. 

Crowl- the other person had been sitting in the chair behind him. He remembered that at some point, Anthony had leaned over and put a hand on his shoulder, ran his thumb back and forth gently along his back for a while. He couldn’t remember why, though. 

How strange. Waking up was like being first corporated into this form from his original angelic shape, slowly becoming more aware of the pounding in his head and the ache of all his limbs. His spine, especially, was expressing a serious grievance against being on the floorboards all night. 

So that was sleep. 

He rubbed his eyes. 

He didn’t remember anything at all.

And the first thing to do was clear, he firmly pulled the metaphorical lever of an important decision. His human name, should, and must, be Ezra from now on. And Raphael for a last name had been relatively common in Londinium since the 11th century. 

He might as well admit it now: he had been weighing up names for himself since the very day he had first heard Crowley describe himself as Anthony J Crowley. 

So that was that. He was Ezra Raphael now. He was obedient to the will of Father God, who had given him his original name, and he would be obedient to Her original name for him by choosing one as close to it as he respectfully could. 

It felt important and sensible to start to accept the reality of his punishment as it was, as soon as possible. He knew he and the newly minted Anthony had come off lightly in some ways, compared to the vivid, screaming deaths heaven and hell had prepared for them. 

But no agent of upstairs or downstairs could have metamorphosed them like this. 

That thought was hot to the touch, so Ezra rolled his shoulders and stood up. His knees made a truly alarming cracking sound as he straightened his legs, and for a moment he froze to see if they would do anything else. 

As he listened, he heard the rising and falling of traffic in the streets outside. He could even hear people talking. He had always been able to, of course. But it seemed different now. 

Ezra was suddenly aware of his own vulnerability. Most of those people, and certainly any small group of them, could overpower him. And.....and do what? He didn’t even know. 

There was a noise in the kitchen, and Ezra spun round, pricking with alarm, stomach swooping. 

What...was that humming? 

He staggered through to the next room, still sore in every limb, and found Anthony Crowley in the kitchen, sitting on the counter, legs swinging, thumbing his way through a magazine. Where had he even found one?


End file.
